Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ’ilâtün Fâ’ilâtün Fâ’ilün

Yaraşur dostum lebün kân-ı güher
Agzun açdukça dilün dürler döker
Zülf ü ruhsârun ucından rûz u şeb
Cân harâret dil perîşânluk çeker

In English

1. My friend, your lip befits a mine of jewels; whenever you open your mouth your tongue pours out pearls.

2. Because of your tresses and your cheek, day and night the soul suffers fever and the heart distress.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This two-couplet poem is written in the "fâ'ilâtün fâ'ilâtün fâ'ilün" pattern. The rhyme is the "-er" sound in "güher, döker, çeker"; the two lines of the first couplet rhyme with each other, and in the second couplet only the second line keeps this rhyme. In a footnote Kılıç says "This poem is a nazm". In his note on the Persian nazms he also explains that he counted as "nazm", on the evidence of their rhymes, the poems shown as "kıta" in the edition of the Persian divançe. The kıt'a is a verse form written without an opening rhymed couplet; in this poem, however, the first couplet rhymes like an opening couplet. According to Kılıç's count in the introduction, this is the only Turkish nazm in the divan. The edition places the poem at the end of the murabbas under the number "1"; where Kılıç describes the order of the manuscript, however, he says that the divan begins with the Turkish ghazals, followed by the Turkish nazm and the müfreds. In the edition there is no folio mark within the text of this poem.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet rests on the familiar link in divan poetry between speech and pearls. The beloved's lip is likened through its red colour to a mine of jewels, that is, a ruby mine; the words that come from her mouth are pearls. "Kân-ı güher" (mine of jewels) and "dürler" (pearls) form a congruence of images (tenasüp). Elsewhere in the divan Şâhî also likens his own poetry to pearls; the couplets on "dürr-i nazm" (the pearl of verse) quoted by Kılıç are examples. In this nazm, however, the one scattering pearls is the beloved's tongue.

The second couplet is built more skilfully and is an example of leff ü neşr (enumeration and distribution). In the first line two things are named: the tresses and the ruhsâr (cheek). In the second line the two states corresponding to them are given: the soul suffers harâret (fever, fire), the heart distress. The redness of the cheek brings fire, the disorder of the tresses brings distress. "Rûz u şeb" (day and night) in the same line is also part of this order: night corresponds to the black tresses, day to the bright cheek. Since the things named and their counterparts are arranged crosswise rather than in sequence, this is a leff ü neşr-i müşevveş (disordered distribution). This analysis is ours. The little two-couplet poem thus names three beauties of the beloved, lip, tresses and cheek, together with the pairs of speech and pearl, night and day, fire and distress. There is no sign in the poem of the person to whom or the time at which it was written.

Bibliography

  • Filiz Kılıç (ed.), Şâhî Dîvânı (Şehzâde Bâyezîd), Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Kütüphaneler ve Yayımlar Genel Müdürlüğü, 2018, e-book p. 147, nazm no. 1 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Efendi, Manzum Eserler 225); footnote 122 ("This poem is a nazm"), footnote 221 (the distinction between nazm and kıt'a); also p. 26 (the only Turkish nazm of the divan), p. 27 (the order of the manuscript), p. 29 (survey of metres), https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/59394,sahi-divanipdf.pdf.

Online sources